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2005-02-23 Iraq-Jordan

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Posted by Steve 2005-02-23 9:32:47 AM|| || Front Page|| [8 views since 2007-05-07] Top

#1 Just as an aside: one of the oddities of WWII was that more British citizens in Britain died as a result of traffic accidents involving American forces than were killed in the German Blitz.

Posted by Anonymoose 2005-02-23 9:58:28 AM|| 2005-02-23 9:58:28 AM|| Front Page Top

#2 Well, what did anyone expect, they drive on the wrong side of the road over there!

Posted by gromky 2005-02-23 10:22:15 AM|| 2005-02-23 10:22:15 AM|| Front Page Top

#3 LOL Grom.

two divisions had one set of equipment in Europe, and another set back in the United States, where they were based
It's expensive to fight like an American.

Posted by Shipman 2005-02-23 11:27:32 AM|| 2005-02-23 11:27:32 AM|| Front Page Top

#4 Shipman, the reasoning was if the Rooskis had attacked there wasn't time to ship all the equipment over to Europe so equipment was pre-positioned. The troops would be flown over and mate up with the pre-positioned stuff. The equipment in the States would then be loaded on ships and used as replacement stuff for stuf lost in battle. Actually, a good way to go.

Posted by Deacon Blues 2005-02-23 11:40:57 AM|| 2005-02-23 11:40:57 AM|| Front Page Top

#5 Warfare since the railway (and arguably before, but in a different way) has been a race to the battlefield, culminating in the timetables of Russian troop trains in WWI, that once begun were difficult to be stopped. Anything that could allow you to steal a march on the enemy such as delaying his mobilization by a day was seen as beneficial. Prepositioned weapons lets your guys get off the planes with brand new shiny mothballed equipment, ready to go, and as you said, with plenty of spares ready for shipping.

"Amateurs study tactics. Professionals study logistics."

Posted by Mark E. 2005-02-23 12:03:18 PM|| 2005-02-23 12:03:18 PM|| Front Page Top

#6 Iraqi boomers know where the caches are.

Posted by Lucky 2005-02-23 12:28:55 PM|| 2005-02-23 12:28:55 PM|| Front Page Top

#7 The experience gained in all those âREFORGERâ exercises made the army, and marines, confident that they could apply the concept of pre-positioned equipment elsewhere.
As an unfortunate byproduct the Army forgot how to deploy "for real". Too many years of flogging the same old exercise.

Among other things, this resulted in over reliance on the 82nd to go places and do things, and a couple of divisions that were the equivalent of hangar queens. One BIG advantage of the Navy/Marine approach through the cold war was that every unit cycled through a deployment every 18 months, keeping everyone in a reasonably battle ready status.

Another problem is that the canned exercises are planned at too high a level, with pre-allocated logistics/transport resources. A case in point was that early in Desert Shield the Army had to get water from the Marines. The Army had the capability, but it was in reserve units requiring mobilization & training.

See
http://www.gulflink.osd.mil/declassdocs/marines/19960917/082696_d50039_001.html
or
http://www.army.mil/cmh-pg/books/DAHSUM/1990-91/ch07.htm (p93)

In (old) Army think "we have that capability", unfortunately it's at the theater level sitting in Germany, and the poor SOB's on the pointy end of the stick have to improvise.

Posted by Anonymous4385 2005-02-23 1:56:02 PM|| 2005-02-23 1:56:02 PM|| Front Page Top

#8 Anon4385, plus the Rooskies would have dumped a lot of very persistent nerve agent on the POMCUS sites as soon as hostilities broke out.

Posted by 11A5S 2005-02-23 2:46:19 PM|| 2005-02-23 2:46:19 PM|| Front Page Top

#9 I didn't say it was wrong DB, just expensive. :)

Posted by Shipman 2005-02-23 3:15:28 PM|| 2005-02-23 3:15:28 PM|| Front Page Top

#10 I took part in some eleven different REFORGER exercises in one extent or another during my military career. The first was in 1969 with the 49th Tac Fighter Wing. There are problems with the concept, and people are still working on them. That's why you have 700 tanks and thousands of other vehicles in various places around the world. Military equipment began having the ability to operate in a chemical environment in 1976, and it kept getting better. Most of the equipment stored was wrapped in material that would have been discarded prior to decontamination and issuance. Several of the "storage sites" we SAID we were stocking, weren't. We studied the Russian battle plan almost as much as they did. There would have been some major surprises for them if they'd ever come across the line. I'm glad they never did, but it wouldn't have been the cake-walk a lot of people outside the military spouted off about.

Posted by Old Patriot 2005-02-23 3:44:40 PM|| [http://oldpatriot.blogspot.com/] 2005-02-23 3:44:40 PM|| Front Page Top

#11 Like that graphic--it must have been a recruiting poster for the Pennsylvania Nat'l Guard with that keystone in the corner (the Germans supposedly called it "The Bloody Bucket" when they were slugging it out with the 28th ID in the Huertgen Forest).

Posted by Dar 2005-02-23 4:25:15 PM|| 2005-02-23 4:25:15 PM|| Front Page Top

#12 Speaking of roatation and traffic, my brother has one more week in Baghdad, then he has to say goodbye to getting around in armored SUV's. He is going back to Naples, Italy. He is a bit nervous as he will have to get around the Naples madhouse in an unarmored BMW. Poor fella.

Posted by Zpaz 2005-02-23 6:21:42 PM|| 2005-02-23 6:21:42 PM|| Front Page Top

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